DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) is an open-source tool for securely wiping hard drives. You boot DBAN from a USB stick and overwrite the entire disk multiple times with random data.
DBAN supports various wiping standards (e.g., DoD 5220.22-M, Gutmann). For traditional magnetic hard drives (HDD), DBAN is a proven method. For SSDs and NVMe drives, overwriting falls short due to wear leveling and reserve blocks — Secure Erase or physical destruction is required instead. DBAN is especially useful when decommissioning hardware for reuse or disposal.